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With the Bird scooter you're paying for the convenience of "free" parking (obviously the public pay in terms of sidewalk space etc., but to the rider, it's included), with no risk of a loss (to you) due to theft.

Yes, you can buy a scooter and the raw numbers make sense. But carrying a scooter up and down stairs, through elevators, and so on is a pain in the ass and, you need a place to store it at each destination.

The value in a Bird scooter isn't in the use of the scooter, it's in the non-use of the scooter. Jump on, leave it, jump off.

The main factor is not to have to worry about charging it while you do what you do, you just drop it off and pick up another one on the way out.

That and “I walked here but I’m too tired to walk home” type trips.

It’s just mental baggage to own your conveyance (ask any driver how they feel about finding parking in any decently dense area).

The value isn’t the cost saving compared to buying your own - it’s the convenience of being to pick one up anywhere and drop it off anywhere.

If you think you can carry an electric scooter with you around all day… good luck! I struggle to get one up a set of stairs.

That’s not to say that the price isn't wrong, but if the cost was equal between having my own scooter and having access to a rental pool, I would choose the flexibility of the rental pool every time. Having said that, I do think you have overstated the typical costs slightly too with a 15 minute ride costing c$3.

I bought a Xiaomi model for $400 at Walmart, cut a QR code off an Amazon package and taped it over the power button. I left it out in the open next to the bird scooters in LA wherever I went and lasted about 6 months before somebody scooped it up. I assume the rest of the time people tried to scan the QR code and assumed the app wasn't working. :)

I am confused. It got stolen in the end? Did you try to avoid it getting stolen with the sticker?

Yes. It got stolen in the end but for 6 months I just left it unlocked on the sidewalks of LA under the guise that it was a Bird scooter. It might have actually been accidentally scooped up by a charging truck but I'll never know.

Are you happy with the outcome? I think there are better ways to avoid it getting stolen :D

> it’s the convenience of being to pick one up anywhere and drop it off anywhere

Sure _if_ there’s a scooter nearby _and_ it’s charged… Then there’s the issue of needing a half dozen scooter apps all to use / find a scooter near you. The problem only becomes worse if there’s a group of people… These scooters are mostly just expensive trash laying around cities.

> Sure _if_ there’s a scooter nearby _and_ it’s charged… Then there’s the issue of needing a half dozen scooter apps

Sure, but these are all relative inconveniences and you have to compare them to the alternative inconvenience/cost of either other forms of transport for your short journey, or lugging a scooter around with you constantly.

If the nearby scooter is out of battery, you don't got a scooter at all.

That's probably the ultimate inconvenience. You thought you had a ride, but you actually didn't.

The app tells you if it has battery - you go to the app and it shows you a map of all the nearest scooters with charge rather than wonder up to random scooters.

I find it way more convenient to just be able to pick something up and then leave it again. In Austin the scooters still seem to be doing great -- they are everywhere and get tons of use. (And I don't hear too much hatred of them, unlike other places.)

I thought they were cool in SF too before the city fucked it all up.

I am sort of sympathetic to arguments that they look kind of janky lying all around. But come on, cars are 1000x times worse! We're just used to it. (And the scooters aren't nearly as deadly as cars -- both for accidents and for emissions.)

I don’t know i live downtown and it’s crazy how utilized the scooters are.

Those are probably homeless guys who have hotwired scooters.

I can guarantee you this is not the case

Yeah I also live downtown. The scooters and bikes here seen to be always be used, either by people who just want to get from A to B or groups of people just enjoying their time downtown.

The scooter companies tend to be smart too and relocate a bunch for any events. I'll frequently see dozens of scooters and bikes lined up and organized outside of the arena before whatever event gets out.

I feel like I'm willing to "rent" things that cost less than $500 all the time. I'm probably unique, but I hate maintaining a printer. When my laser printer died early in covid and supply for new printers was messed up due to WFH I just printed at the local print shop. That's also what I did before I had a laser printer and anytime I needed color prints. I rent power tools all the time from the hardware store.

I recently spent almost a year in a medium sized city in Europe. The first month or two I had a bus pass, but after I had a routine I only used it for one-offs and walked most places. It was very bike friendly so it had space for scooters. If I stayed longer maybe I would have bought a bike. I walked most places, but if I was in a hurry a scooter was the fastest way to get somewhere and I used it at least every few weeks--faster than a bus. I never once thought about buying a scooter. I noticed a few people carrying them inside stores and it seemed so awkward.

Dude your friend seems cool with his 3D printer but those don’t move. The problem is that people move and want convenience where ever they go.

I own a car and yet I still Uber and walk. Sometimes you walk somewhere and are too lazy to walk back. Maybe you walk to your friends house and they drive you to a restaurant and now you don’t want to walk all the way back. Tons of use cases where “transit comes to me” is better than “I go to transit” or “I babysit transit”.

Cars ruin cities and are expensive. Scooters are comparably cheap and low impact (visually, physically, acoustically, etc). The issue is that the road system is designed for cars (lanes) and sometimes walkers (sidewalks) and by a rare miracle bikes (bike lanes). Do you drive scooters in the sidewalk (illegal, annoying, likely to get them banned) or in the street (dangerous, bikers all have horror stories, nevermind scooters!) or ambiguity (bike lane?). If we had “alt mobility lanes” for bikes and scooters and one wheels and long boards and all that shit then it’d be so easy.

It’s the convenience of not having to carry one around.

If the device were large enough that it was a hassle, maybe you'd have a point. But I've used these scooters. They're rather small.

They also beep at you if you're in the wrong part of the street, and they shut down seemingly randomly with crappy GPS sensors trying to keep you in certain lanes. If I had my own, none of that crap would happen.

Are we talking about the same scooters? They usually weigh c12kg and are very unwieldy to carry.

(Basing this on a Xiaomi Mi M365 which is one of the most popular ones)

Small compared to a bicycle.

Of course, bicycles have other benefits so I'm not hating on the bike users. But yes, 12kg / 25lbs or so isn't really that big or bulky IMO.

Well a typical road bike weighs 8kg - 11kg so they are often lighter.

Plus you don't see people carrying around bicycles on their person all day, so i'm not sure why that's the reference for what people will carry.

Well, I love having both of my hands free, so the cost is worth the convenience to me.

> maybe you'd have a point

i don’t get it. i can look out my window from this cafe and watch people on these scooters deciding it’s worth it to them regardless of whether someone on HN can convince you that the trade offs are worthwhile.

i don’t understand what you’re arguing.

> But these Bird scooters look like they're around $500? If you're using the thing like 2 or 3 times a day, it won't take long at $5 / ride before it makes more sense to just buy one for yourself.

Theft. I live in a city where you can expect any portable form of transportation to get stolen, from inside your house's garage at that.

Renting offloads the risk of theft to someone else.

Most people who have scooters around me use it for part or entirety of their commute. They just carry it in buses, trains or trams and have them stashed under their desk at the office. They are at no point left unattended.

> They are at no point left unattended.

I've had every bike I've owned stolen from inside my house's garage.

I have to sleep at some point.

Though I guess a foldable scooter could just be brought inside the house.

> I don't think $2000 and under devices belong in the rental space, in most situations.

Taking this completely out of context (i.e. I'm not debating the original point, just saying it for the purpose of sparking potential discussion) - this doesn't extend to other industries. In particular, a ton of photography / videography equipment for rent is under $2k.

One factor there is that you can choose between having a limited set of gear that you own vs a pretty much unlimited set of gear that you can rent from which is guaranteed to work when you need it.

So the comparison between something you'd need day-to-day and one where you would need to use something only incidentally is where it breaks down and I think that is exactly how it works for those scooters: people that need them every day for the same kind of trip will buy one and the incidental users will rent. But for the economies to make good sense those companies would need a substantial base of regular users.

I’d be curious of any research but my anecdotal knowledge of their use is not for planned trips but ad-hoc. I’m here and I could walk to X but I’ll pay 5 bucks to get there in 5 minutes instead of 30 or whatever. I don’t think most folks are using them for their daily commute- certainly that market will quickly do the math and get their own.

> Scooters are light enough that someone can just buy one and carry it around with them all day

The lightest of the e scooters come in around 30lbs. They’re not exactly small either. Certainly not easier to drag around than a bike, as you mentioned.

And airplane luggage weighs 50lbs, and I carry that around for extended periods of time, depending on the situation.

E-scooters are much smaller than bikes in my experience. Bikes are lighter, but the bulk means that you can't take a bike into a typical elevator for example. I know they make some very small city bikes but even the smallest bike seems bigger than a scooter.

That's about the weight of my (non-electrical) folding bike, so not that bad actually. (They have a titanium one too but for that price you can buy a nice second hand car...)

> That's the real issue at hand here.

I really don't think it is. If you think about it as a rent-or-buy trade off for the "same thing", your reasoning is fine. However I think it's really a transportation trade off, which has a bunch more factors.

NB: I was never optimistic about the scooters per se, I just think this is too limiting a way to view it.

I think there is a gap between people riding every day and people riding once a week to go to the bar or something. Of course it is going to be more practical to buy one for the person doing a daily commute to work or something, but my hunch is that user pool is vastly smaller than the pool that is getting around on the weekend.

In addition to all the other sibling reasons why ownership is a dubious proposition, there’s also the fire hazard of storing one of these on your property. Sure, it’s not likely to go up in flames, but from the videos I’ve seen if it does you’re looking at significant damage.

The sweet spot for scooters/bikes seems to be as a tourist attraction.

I live in Toronto and there is a rental bike thing with bike docks. The bikes are shockingly heavy, the phone app sucks, but they remain popular. I attribute the success to summertime tourism.

Bike rentals enable the renter to put the security and maintenance burden on the provider. If bikes were not so easy to steal, rental bikes would not be a business.